How To Make Homemade Ketchup Sauce

An easy recipe for Homemade Ketchup: way easier than you might think, healthy and of course delicious

The most familiar American sauce is actually an ancient eastern one. The word comes from the Malaysian “kecap” meaning a fermented sauce with oily fish and anchovies, served with different dishes.

In the early seventeenth century ketchup sauce appears in Europe where it undergoes many changes; in 1872 the American Henry Heinz perfects the recipe creating the final version with tomato, onions, spices and vinegar.

Delicious on fries and perfect to make pink sauce (mixed to mayonnaise) the sauce we find on the supermarket shelves is not really healthy as it contains a lot of preservatives and flavourings chosen to disguise the taste of low quality raw materials. Ketchup also happens to be an amazing source of potassium, leading our top 10 foods rich in potassium list, so it is advisable to use the best ingredients to enhance its properties.

There are a zillion recipes on the web but the secret to get a perfect sauce is to cook it slowly and patiently using simple and quality ingredients. The fresh and unsophisticated taste of this sauce is so much better than the salty and spiced aroma we are addicted to that it will be easy to switch to the homemade one. Remembering to add some oil on the surface will guarantee a safe cold storage for several days.

How to make homemade ketchup – Ingredients

If you want to try making the sauce you need:

250gr. Tomato sauce

250gr. Ripe tomatoes

200ml. water

1 glass white vinegar

40gr. Sugar

EVO oil

1 white onion

fresh basil

fennel seeds

nutmeg

salt and pepper

…and the preparation

Chop up basil and onion (the amount of onion can be increased if you prefer stronger tastes). Peel and cut tomatoes in pieces, put in a pot with the tomato sauce, water and a drizzle of oil; cook it over a low flame for 30 minutes. Take the pot off the stove and smooth the texture of the ketchup using an immersion blender eventually removing skins and seeds. Put the pot on the stove and let the sauce simmer for 20 minutes, stirring now and then with a wooden spoon.

Now you can add the spices, salt, pepper and vinegar and stir without stopping. Cook for 15-25 minutes more, to get it as thick as you like. When the sauce is ready you can pour it in the glass jars previously sanitized in hot water. Turn the jar upside down and let them cool overnight. When opened keep the jar in the fridge.

It is really worth trying! Your homemade ketchup, customized to your taste, will make you forget about the store bought ones!